Posted on May 2, 2016Your new volunteer is arriving today, reporting for duty. Are you prepared?
What did you do that will make them feel special and welcome?
Wouldn’t it be great if someone on your team, who has never met the new person, rushed up to meet them, prior to even an introduction, and called the new person by name and welcomed them to the team. How special would that make them feel? And the prep work – telling your team that the new person is arriving and then ‘testing’ people periodically to see if they remember the name of the new person.
Do you have their task ready for them?
what do you want them to do on their first day – something easy, meaningful and that at the end of their first day they can say that they achieved something. You want them to get their hands dirty, not just sit around and watch others.
Have you given them a task that they can be successful at?
The training, steps, tools, and people are ready for them to dive right in. If it is an existing task, that others have done previously, then you should have the steps written down ready for the new person to follow, and if the steps include ‘lessons learned’ from previous task owners then that is even better – do talk to this person, don’t do this as we tried it before and it didn’t work.
If the task has never been done before is it appropriate for the new person?
At the very least give them some guidance that if they are spending more than 30 minutes on a particular step then go see this person to brainstorm if there might be a better way forward.
Length of time
do you really want their first day to be 8 hours long – they are volunteers remember!
Great job
At the end did you tell them ‘Great job’, if so well that is not enough, show that you know what they actually accomplished by saying ‘I amazed at how well you did step x, good ingenuity, I wouldn’t have thought to look that up on YouTube, great job!’
Social interaction
Has there been a social interaction during the day – refreshments with the team, some chit chat about what they are interested in, their passions, some get to know them and the team time.
Tell the team
Recognizing their accomplishments by telling them is great, but you should also tell your team and your members about their efforts as well – at the next meeting, in the newsletter, next eAlert and you know what – what about a separate email to the group dedicated solely to the new recruit.
Yes we are all busy ...
and a great welcome will take a bit of extra effort but it pales in comparison to the amount of effort to recruit a replacement volunteer. First impressions!